You miss them, and your heart is eager blue,

longing for their missing kiss

whose heart and mind belong to them, not you,

though fairly shared. Well, answer this:

should truth betray and paint them ugly, lowly,

do you, by beauty's lie, ignore it?

With all your love of life eroded slowly,

does love for them at once restore it?

Are bleak benighted weeks of lonely pining

forgotten at reunion's hour?

Do shoots of upright spite begin declining,

begotten by a lesser flower?

Treat your anguished learning with a laugh;

that bitter yearning is the sweetening half!

-Connor Kildenny, with fiddle and horn